The new club…
After rejecting offers from Sheffield Utd, MK Dons, Bristol City, Bolton and Saint-Etienne, I came an agreement with a club…
After Malky Mackay’s departure to West Ham, I was offered the chance to take over at Cardiff City and snapped up the opportunity to manage them, especially with them in 2nd place.
Budgets
I went forward cautiously and decided that I would go for promotion, which gave me a £575k budget and £264k in wages – £12k under what we are spending, meaning I will have to sell to balance the books.
Team Report
As you can see from the team report Cardiff have a very strong team full of influential players such as Bellamy and Whittingham. Marshall is an excellent GK between the posts whilst the defense looks decent, although it needs some extra recruits to strengthen the depth. The CM’s look excellent, with Gunnarsson, Collison and Whittingham all rated 3 1/2 stars, whilst the ST’s look good as well, although Bellamy will be playing on the wing in a 4-2-2-2 formation I intend to play – two CM’s, two wingers and two ST’s.
Transfers
With the loan deadline just a day after I joined, I decided to fill the last 2 places in the squad with 2 loan deals – in came Jack Collison and Clint Hill on loan from West Ham and QPR respectively. Collison is rated 3 1/2 stars and will definitely challenge for a first team place whilst Hill is rated 2 1/2 stars and is backup for both CB and LB.
November 2012
It has been a dream start for myself as Cardiff City manager as we won 2 and drew 1 of my opening 3 games of managing Cardiff. A not so great performance but a win nevertheless saw us beat Brighton 1-0 at home thanks to an Arron Gunnarsson penalty, before we went to Blackburn Rovers – 2nd v 1st and a very tough game ahead. Not for Cardiff. An immense performance saw Veliknoja chip Robinson in first half stoppage time, before Hudson’s header and Veliknoja’s deflected cross gave Cardiff their best win of the season so far. The final game of the month was at home to bottom of the league Milwall – 3 times we lead through Bellamy, Mason and Maynard but every time Milwall pegged us back and we had to settle with a disappointing point.
Despite that result Cardiff still sit top of the table, 5 points clear of 2nd placed Huddersfield and we’re in a really good position going into the Christmas months;
Next post will be a lot bigger and will also feature the January signings – I look forward to it!
Cheers,
Dan.
